I’m of the belief Votto had a better year at the plate than Stanton.
It’s just weird that even though you can make a strong case that Stanton’s defense/baserunning value puts him ahead of Votto, Stanton will win because the voters think he was a better hitter than Votto.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. -- Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot)
1 in 10 major leaguers is granted an exemption for adderall, over 100 players in the last reported year.
Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) per the MLB/MLBPA Joint Drug Agreement:
A Player authorized to ingest a Prohibited Substance through a valid, medically appropriate prescription provided by a duly licensed physician shall receive a Therapeutic Use Exemption ("TUE"). To be "medically appropriate," the Player must have a documented medical need under the standards accepted in the United States or Canada for the prescription in the prescribed dosage.
kaldaniels (11-06-2017)
As a comparison, about 1 in 20 non-professional American men aged 19-25 last year had a prescription for adderall. Older age groups, that percentage drops significantly.
EDIT: That 1 in 20 above is all ADHD meds combined, not just adderall.
Last edited by Kinsm; 11-06-2017 at 11:34 PM.
If there is a competitive advantage to be had by being on a stimulant (certainly not out of the question), I wonder if a team has or will get a team physician to wink and nod and conclude that most of a team has ADHD. This is MLB any advantage helps. And exemption aside you have to figure some details would fall under the shield of HIIPA.
There is a slew of documentation necessary for the exemption. Some players have gotten the exemption one year and then not the next, below is a prime example.
https://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/...dderall-022415
The thing is you don't need a shady team physician, players are still allowed to choose their own physicians - so they can find a shady one outside the club if they really want too. There are plenty of unscrupulous doctors, as there are police officers, teachers, accountants, and so on.
It's somewhat humorous, but under diagnosing is probably just as bad if not worse than over diagnosing IMHO.
There are over 320 million people in this country, half of them live in just 146 counties.
http://static1.businessinsider.com/i...county-map.png
http://i2.wp.com/metrocosm.com/wp-co...alf.png?w=1040
When you put that many people on top of one another, award them stagnant wages for 3 decades +, and feed them 24/7 polarized media you can develop a lot of people with mental issues.
This is one of the reasons why we have more and more mass casualty events in this nation, we have to start talking about mental health.
Last edited by Kinsm; 11-06-2017 at 11:56 PM.
Cooper (11-08-2017)
Just do a google search of baseball and amphetamines:
http://www.espn.com/mlb/columns/stor...ark&id=2225013
https://sportspub.wordpress.com/2010...s-in-baseball/But amphetamines are so old school that many observers just assumed they'd never be addressed. Baseball people have long declared that most fans don't care what a player uses to get himself "ready" to play, and the notion that guys have been popping wide-awake pills for decades, going back well into the Willie Mays say-heyday, carries with it some implied grandfathering in of greenies as an accepted form of game preparedness.
In truth, amphetamines are classified by the federal government as a controlled substance, it has been a federal crime since 1970 to use them without a prescription, and people in and around baseball have been trying -- almost routinely without success -- to drag their use out into the light of day for years and years.
Shoot, greenies got mentioned at least as far back as the Pittsburgh drug trials of the 1980s, when players testified they received the stimulants from Willie Stargell, Bill Madlock and even Mays. All three men, who denied either using or supplying, later were cleared of wrongdoing by the commissioner's office. (The current commissioner, Selig, has said he first heard about greenies in the old Milwaukee Braves clubhouses of the late 1950s.)
The stimulants have been steadily mentioned ever since, too -- but almost never by anyone in the midst of his career. A retired Tony Gwynn spoke openly of baseball's amphetamine problem in 2003, estimating for The New York Times that 50 percent of position players were using them routinely, many of them before almost every game. (Gwynn subsequently was blasted by those in uniform at the time for, in their opinion, speaking out of school.) Chad Curtis spoke after his retirement about the pressure on fielders not to play the game "naked" -- that is, not to play without speed.
https://www.si.com/vault/2002/06/03/...regame-routineAmphetamines (AKA Greenies). Beginning in the 60s and lasting all the way up to their 2005 ban, illegal amphetamines were the most widely abused drug in baseball. Pete Rose and Hank Aaron are two of the biggest names that have confessed to amphetamine use. In addition, Willie Mays and Willie Stargell have been linked to both the use and selling of those illegal little green pills. The use of amphetamines were so rampant during the 70s that it is said that there were 2 coffee pots in team clubhouses. But one of them wasn’t your standard decaf. One of the two pots was not laced with amphetamines. Plus, teams were lacing everything with them. So even if a player from the 70s says he didn’t take them then there is still a very good chance that he took them without even knowing about it.
Amphetamines, particularly, have a long, documented history inbaseball. Pete Rose admitted in a 1979 Playboy interview that hehad used "greenies." Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Randy Lerchtestified under oath in 1981 that the physician for the Phillies'Double A Reading affiliate had written him prescriptions foramphetamines; several other members of the 1980 world championPhils were also alleged to have gotten prescriptions for thedrugs.
More recently, even more rampant use of stimulants has beenconfirmed to SI by players on a spectrum from heavy users tothose who have only observed it. According to 1996 NationalLeague MVP Ken Caminiti, who admits to having taken amphetaminesas well as steroids during his 15-year career, there are someteams on which almost everyone uses some kind of stimulant: "Youhear it all the time from teammates, 'You're not going to playnaked, are you?' Even the guys who are against greenies may bepopping 25 caffeine pills, and they're up there [at bat] withtheir hands shaking. This game is so whacked out that guys willtake anything to get an edge. You got a pill that will make mefeel better? Let me have it."
Chad Curtis, an outfielder who retired last year after 10 bigleague seasons and says he never used performance-enhancingdrugs, agrees with Caminiti's approximation that perhaps 90% ofthe players take some form of pregame stimulant. "You might haveone team where eight guys play naked and another team wherenobody does, but that sounds about right," Curtis says."Sometimes guys don't even know what they're taking. One guy willtake some pills out of his locker and tell somebody else, 'Here,take one of these. You'll feel better.' The other guy will takeit and not even know what it is."
Curtis adds that amphetamine use is so prevalent that nonusersare sometimes ostracized as slackers. "If the starting pitcherknows that you're going out there naked, he's upset that you'renot giving him [everything] you can," Curtis says. "The big-timepitcher wants to make sure you're beaning up before the game."
Last edited by klw; 11-07-2017 at 09:58 AM.
WrongVerb (11-07-2017)
We should get back to the topic of this thread.
Joey Votto is awesome!
Discuss...
Donder (11-07-2017),Edd Roush (11-07-2017),Hoosier Red (11-28-2017),thatcoolguy_22 (11-12-2017)
Coworker asked the chance he wins. I said 15% - 20%. Too low?
I’m guessing he finishes 2nd.
Also, between him and the GG finalists, who is most likely to actually win? I’ll guess if anything Billy finally gets his GG. Although a Tucker GG wouldn’t shock me.
Chip R (11-07-2017)
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